C.P.E. Bach's works have been listed in several scholarly
catalogues, most recently E. Eugene Helm's Thematic Catalogue
of the Works of C.P.E. Bach (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1989). The present set of bibliographic aids is intended
to supplement the Helm catalogue as well as other relevant
publications, notably Darrell Berg's facsimile edition of the
composer's keyboard works (The Collected Works for Solo
Keyboard by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach 1714-1788, 6 vols., New
York: Garland Publishing, 1985).
C.P.E. Bach's music has been a focus of specialist interest since
the mid-nineteenth century. The 1970s and 1980s saw a resurgence
of interest in the composer, particularly among American and
German scholars. The result was a series of dissertations, a new
biography, and other publications, as well as the publication of
the Helm catalog and the initiation of a project to issue the
composer's complete works in a critical edition. Performers also
showed increasing interest in exploring the composer's works,
issuing an impressive number of first recordings, notably of the
long-neglected vocal works, as well as works for chamber ensemble
and for solo keyboard that have long been mentioned in the
literature but have gone unrecorded.
Those interested in the composer's music, however, often find
themselves frustrated by an exceptionally confusing situation
with regard to the location and cataloguing of the works. Helm's
catalog was meant to supplant the turn-of-the-century catalog by
Alfred Wotquenne (Thematisches Verzeichnis der Werke von Carl
Philipp Emanuel Bach, 1714-1788, Leipzig: Breitkopf und
Härtel, 1905). The Helm catalog surpasses Wotquenne not
only in the number of works listed but in the inclusion of
listings for modern editions, writings about the music, and
musical sources (manuscripts and early printed editions). The
Helm catalog assigns new numbers to the works (here designated
"H" numbers), and it includes a concordance to the older
Wotquenne numbers. Nevertheless, both systems of numbering
remain in use. Moreover, neither the Helm catalogue nor the Berg
facsimile edition includes a general index, making it difficult
to locate matter pertaining to individual pieces.
In addition, neither Wotquenne nor Helm, nor the shortened
abstract of the Helm catalog published as the composer's
work-list in the New Grove Dictionary, includes a
concordance to a third important numbering system: the so-called
Nachlassverzeichnis, a catalogue of the composer's estate
published shortly after his death and containing a nearly
complete list of his works--many with dates and places of
composition attached (Verzeichniss des musikalischen
Nachlasses des verstorbenen Capellmeisters Carl Philipp Emanuel
Bach, Hamburg, 1790; annotated facs. ed. Rachel W. Wade as
The Catalogue of Carl Philipp Emanuel's Estate; New York:
Garland, 1981).
The present materials are intended to help rectify the situation.
They are byproducts of my own research which I thought others
might find useful. In distributing them I have no intention of
slighting the work of other scholars, without which I could not
have produced them. These indexes are not intended to replace,
supplant, or implicitly criticize any existing scholarly work.
Last updated 07/26/1997